Kickstarter - Sui Generis

Originally Posted by Fluent
Just watched the video and read a little more about this project. It sounds incredible. If I were a PC gamer I would definitely donate to this project.

Heretic! You should burn!

I'm probably the only person on this site who plays strictly on consoles. I played a few PC RPGs in the past, namely Diablo and Diablo II, and the amazing MMORPG Asheron's Call, but haven't played a game on PC in years. I'm very happy to just plop my ass on my bed and play a console game on my 42" screen with no issues. I guess you could say I'm a casual gamer these days (another heresy).

TV's are so cheap nowadays that i think almost anyone could afford to dual hook their PC up to a big screen, running a game off Steam is as easy as using a console, if not easier. Running PC games in the DOS era though, wow, that was something else, had to write your own autoexec.bat and config.sys's and with a little luck it would work

But whatever works for you is good i guess Personally i'd hate to lose mods for games..

I do like the idea of mods, and I think in a way I am missing out on them by only playing on a console. Especially for my favorite games like Morrowind, Oblivion, etc. So maybe someday I will play on a PC again, just to experience mods.

Funny story, but my experience with mods actually involved me downloading them via FTP to my modded Xbox . I played Morrowind with a couple mods and it was great. It actually worked on the Xbox just fine, but a few mods I had to disable because they caused lag. I imagine it put a big strain on the Xbox's CPU to run some of those mods, but I was able to at least get a little taste of them, and it was a ton of fun. Some of those mods were amazing.

And yeah, I have a cable that connects my laptop to my TV and it's pretty easy to set up any game to work that way. I played a few PS1 games on a PS1 emulator that way. That's about the closest I've gotten to recently to PC gaming.

Geez, just talking about this stuff makes me want to get a gaming PC. One day I will…

Hey guys,

Just posted a first update explaining more about the story and setting:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/…-generis/posts

Hope this gives you some faith in our ability and the work that has gone into this aspect of the game.

More updates on their way, we're listening to people.

Madoc

Originally Posted by vurt
That doesnt mean anything except it isnt balanced correctly or you played at too high difficulty/or fought the boss too early on. Lazy programmers doesnt care about balancing the game and instead make sure you're able to save anywhere. In case they didn't balance it correctly the player can still pass that boss/area by just abusing save/loading numerous times until luck strikes - a form of cheating.

I think save checkpoints can work in a linear corridor game but I don't see how it can work in a massive open world sandbox RPG.

Save checkpoints seem to be implemented primarily to make games that are too easy or too short last longer.

For example, Hard Reset is a fun game, and I love the environments, but if it didn't have save checkpoints it would only last about 2 hours.

Originally Posted by Kordanor
Yep, exactly.
On the other hand, Star Citizen goes with controllers but says that the hardware for consoles suck and this is their reason they don't want to be crippled by doing a multi platform game while implementing conrollers on the PC.
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They're implementing controllers along with joysticks and mouse and keyboards. This doesn't have anything to do with consoles but rather their commitment to support a wide range of inputs and peripherals (including VR systems like the Oculus Rift and full flight control systems with pedals and all.)

Originally Posted by Madoc

Hope this gives you some faith in our ability and the work that has gone into this aspect of the game.

More updates on their way, we're listening to people.

Madoc

It is not so much a question of ability. Many studios gave up on trying to deliver what Bare Mettle Entertainment studio will try to deliver. Hence no level of ability will guarantee success as this game's vision revives the experimental side of video gaming developpment.

It is more about what adhesion to the vision and what players expect from gaming. Always a big gap between what players declare to want and what they really want. As a whole, players are conservative.

And the perception of KS. Some see it as a pre order system to deliver commercial projects that have a lesser profit curve than the projects currently picked up by main stream publishers. Others see it as an opportunity to help funding experimental projects or the likes.

A question about the combat system: currently it looks like being bent toward the offensive.
Will it include defensive play? I notice none of the characters display the classic shield plus one handed weapon combat. If supported by the combat system, will it be integrated along the same lines as the current system (that looks like building up on the flow of the fencing moves[attack, parry, riposte, counter-riposte) or will it come as a breaking up of the sequence?

Originally Posted by CountChocula
I think save checkpoints can work in a linear corridor game but I don't see how it can work in a massive open world sandbox RPG.

You should try Dark Souls (open world action-RPG).. I really can't imagine that game with a save anywhere feature, would be absoutely terrible.

Originally Posted by jhwisner
They're implementing controllers along with joysticks and mouse and keyboards. This doesn't have anything to do with consoles but rather their commitment to support a wide range of inputs and peripherals (including VR systems like the Oculus Rift and full flight control systems with pedals and all.)

Yep, my emphasis was on saying that PCs also have got a big hardware advantage. PC development is somewhat held back by Consoles as everything has to run on consoles as well nowadays. Games like the Ultimas or Wing Commanders used the maximum of PC hardware. Roberts is going "full PC" not for control or "being classic" reasons but because of being able to use full hardware capacities.

Originally Posted by Madoc
I guess our naivety strikes again, we thought that people would understand our vision by reading the text once we had their attention. The aim of the video was to prove we had the means to actually develop such an ambitious project on such a small budget.

As already said, the KS launch was quite poorly executed given the amount you're asking for.

I find your project very interesting, and I will donate (the reason that I haven't done so yet, is that Kickstarter wanted my credit card details - whereas I've previously been able to use my Amazon account to pay).

You should be able to get what you want, but I think a relaunch will be necessary.

Originally Posted by Ithilien
As already said, the KS launch was quite poorly executed given the amount you're asking for.

I find your project very interesting, and I will donate (the reason that I haven't done so yet, is that Kickstarter wanted my credit card details - whereas I've previously been able to use my Amazon account to pay).

You should be able to get what you want, but I think a relaunch will be necessary.

I agree here. Well, I pledged a bit now but it will be very hard to reach the goal.
Relaunch with a better main video may do the job.

About the payment: In the past you were able to use your Amazon.US account, because the payment was done to kickstarter US.
But it seems like the UK Kickstarter project are not connected to Amazon.US, which makes sense as the fees for the money transfer will be different. I had to pay some additional euros every time for the money conversion. Now probably US residents have to pay a few extra dollars (and the rest of EU using euros probably as well). But of course it would have been more elegant if they connected it to amazon.co.uk at least. But maybe that will come in the future.

Originally Posted by Ithilien
As already said, the KS launch was quite poorly executed given the amount you're asking for.

I find your project very interesting, and I will donate (the reason that I haven't done so yet, is that Kickstarter wanted my credit card details - whereas I've previously been able to use my Amazon account to pay).

You should be able to get what you want, but I think a relaunch will be necessary.

There would be a kind of contradiction between stating the situation of video gaming industry that includes that marketing has grown to dominate gameplay and piling on a marketing campaign.

KS could allow developpment studios degrees of independence as the project is funded in advance and does not need to sell to reach balance. Developpers could be uncompromizing on their vision of gaming.

This studio comes up sincerely about what they consider the priorities in video gaming. And that does not include piling on marketing over gameplay.

Not sure though that KS will appear to be the delivery machine to enable integrity in terms of video game vision and developpment.

As written above, the display of abilities is already done. The engine is quite impressive at the moment.

Even with a heavy marketing campaign (which would contradict the video gaming developpment ethics of the studio), it is unsure that the project would sell.

It includes several features that are unlikely to be popularly demanded by gamers for example, like a world evolving by itself, without relying on heavy inputs by the player.
Death of the PC probably leading to miss opportunities as the game world goes around and opportunities solving by itself in one way or another without waiting for the player's good will to initiate the completion of the quests.

The amount of money is not that important. Just requires 10,000 or 15,000 backers.

Given the audacity and the goal of the project, given that a lot of gamers who knew of the times when video gaming included an experimental vision are now grown ups with a job for most of them, given that the reach of the project hit major markets around the world, the pledges could be gathered rather easily.

Marketing on whom? What channels? It might be discovered that there is a gap between what players tell to want and what they want actually.

A marketing campaign could hit 100,000 to 200,000 gamers who would tell to love to play that kind of games without providing the required 10 per cent to 20 per cent pledgers while the same players would back up a heavily normated, over repeated game design KS project.

Really the type of video gaming projects that should go through a successful KS campaign if KS is ever to support innovative and audacious projects. But one has to be aware that KS might not be a platform to support that kind of project, but rather a platform to promote commercial projects whose main defect is to be less profitable than projects currently picked by established publishers.

As a sidenote, marketing, work of mouth and ear can be performed by any person that is sold to the project. You can use your own social network to bring some backers to it.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
As a sidenote, marketing, work of mouth and ear can be performed by any person that is sold to the project. You can use your own social network to bring some backers to it.

Seems Brian Fargo backed them, according to their Twitter feed on http://www.baremettle.com/sg/home/ :

BrianFargo My first backed UK Kickstarter project. Looks like fun. I just backed Sui Generis on @Kickstarter kck.st/PkmGrD

Stuff like that might help them quite a bit. Anyway, pldeges seem to have picked up a bit, though probably not nearly enough yet. Although I'm a backer, I must say the last update was a bit underwhelming. What they revealed of the story and world is not more than your typical fantasy tropes, so far. On the other hand I like the mention of dynamic events - that is certainly something I'd like to see tried in a larger scale sandbox RPG (Soldak already did a great job with this in the Action RPG genre).